RIGHTS: “Unholy Alliance” Against Women’s Rights

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 7 2000 (IPS) - A leading human rights organisation has charged that an “unholy alliance” of seven UN member states – along with the Holy See – is trying to undermine international commitments made five years ago for the advancement of women and gender parity.

Pierre Sane, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, said that some governments have been challenging the very basis of what was reaffirmed in Beijing: that women’s rights are human rights.

He said there was an “unholy alliance” – consisting of the Holy See, Iran, Algeria, Nicaragua, Syria, Libya, Morocco and Pakistan – which is attempting to hold women’s human rights to ransom.

The disputes have occurred mostly over issues relating to women’s reproductive rights, sexual violence in marriage, marital rape, equal ownership of land and rights to inheritance, among others.

The commitments, which were made in a document called “Platform for Action” at the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, are currently under review at a weeklong Special Session of the UN General Assembly. The Session, also called Beijing-Plus-Five, is scheduled to conclude Friday.

Amnesty International said that references to human rights treaties are being removed from a draft document – aimed at reaffirming Beijing commitments – which is to be adopted at the Special Session this week.

These include references to the most recent treaty on women’s rights adopted by the General Assembly last year.

The new legal instrument – officially called “the optional protocol” – is an amendment to the 20-year-old UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and empowers individual women to file complaints of discrimination direct to the world body.

The protocol makes it possible for women, either as individuals or in groups, to submit complaints about alleged violations of the Convention. It also entitles CEDAW to initiate inquiries into situations of grave or systematic violations of women’s rights.

Amnesty International said the responsibility of states to ensure the human rights of women in both their public and private lives – well established under international law – is now being questioned by some states.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed similar sentiments when it pointed out that the gains in women’s rights made at the Beijing conference are at risk of being rolled back.

“The gains we made in Beijing are fragile, and they are in danger today,” said Regan Ralph, executive director of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “Some governments have come to New York with the clear intent to dismantle what progress we’ve made.” She, however, refused to identify the governments by name.

Ralph was critical of efforts by some official delegations to remove language describing governments’ role in protecting women from violence.

While the original text of the Beijing Platform for Action called on governments to “take urgent action to eliminate all forms of violence against women in private and public life”, the document under discussion at the Special Session makes no mention of the role of governments in combating violence, she said.

Amnesty International, on the other hand, pointed out that a number of Latin American and Southern African countries have played “an exemplary role” in attempting to steer the Special Session towards a meaningful outcome. But their efforts, it said, have been hampered by a handful of countries after months of negotiations.

In a report released Tuesday, HRW said that five years after the Beijing conference, women have made no significant progress in at least one key area: combating violence against women.

Are women better off? The answer is “a resounding no”, HRW said.

HRW’s reporting on six countries – Jordan, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, South Africa and the United States – shows alarming rates of violence against women. This violence has been fuelled all too often by “the indifference of state officials and the failure to investigate and prosecute cases of violence.”

HRW said that all six countries provide important examples of “how states have failed to meet their human rights obligations when it comes to fighting violence against women.”

Official estimates from Russia indicate that 12,000 women die every year as a result of domestic violence. The non-governmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan concluded that upwards of 80 percent of women in that country are victims of domestic violence.

In South Africa, there were 49,280 reported rapes in 1998 but the non-governmental Rape Crisis Centre says that the actual number of rapes is much higher.

Peru’s National Police received 28,000 reports of domestic abuse in 1998, of which the victims were overwhelmingly women. Official statistics from Jordan indicate that, each year, one-third of the country’s homicides are so-called “honour killings”, in which women are killed by family members to “safeguard their honour”.

In the US, according to the HRW, the Centre for Disease Control reported that at least 1.8 million women are assaulted every year by their husbands and boyfriends. A 1999 US government report also admitted to a serious problem of sexual abuse of women in state and federal prisons.